In general, flooring is installed on children's playgrounds, stadium tracks, and roads for jogging and cycling to provide shock absorption and cushioning. By installing such flooring, for example, it is possible to reduce fatigue or prevent injury during exercise. In manufacture of such flooring, PVC, waste tires, rubber, and the like are ground into chips, an adhesive and a curing agent are added thereto in a certain ratio, mixing and stirring are carried out, and the resulting mixture is subjected to compression molding.
Since flooring manufactured by conventional methods has limitations in elasticity and restoring force, strength and durability thereof are significantly lowered after use for many years. Accordingly, techniques for using various additives or modifying the structure of flooring material have been proposed.
To solve these problems, for example, a method of enhancing the performance of a urethane binder is disclosed in Korean Patent Application Publication No. 10-2012-0027763. In addition, a method of performing elastic packaging using a composite material composed of waste tire chips, recycled rubber chips, and the like on the surfaces of a polyurethane resin and ethylene propylene diene monomer (EPDM) chips is disclosed in Korean Patent Application Publication No. 10-2013-0128222.
As in the prior art, the elastic packing material manufactured using the composite material may impart sufficient elasticity to the floor, thereby improving the walking feeling of pedestrians and mitigating impact, thereby preventing occurrence of accidents. However, in view of recycling of resources, the conventional elastic packaging materials are manufactured using recycled materials such as waste tire chips or recycled rubber chips, or EPDM chips. In this case, harmful substances such as volatile organic compounds (VOCs) may be released from the conventional elastic packaging materials. Particularly, at high temperatures, the emission amount of the harmful substances may be increased. Furthermore, conventional elastic flooring formed by adhering composite materials having different properties, such as a polyurethane resin, EPDM chips, waste tire chips, and recycled rubber chips, has low adhesiveness. Therefore, when the conventional flooring is installed on the floor, the flooring may be easily broken by external impact.
To solve the above-mentioned problems, the present invention discloses a composition for elastic flooring containing environmentally friendly coconut fiber without waste rubber or waste tires and flooring manufactured using the composition.